Even though I think that Dawson is doing a historically good deed in writing about a largely ignored area of history and Holocaust studies, I question that he is the right candidate to write about it. His motivation is in the right place (his mother and aunt are the only known survivors of the Drobitsky Yar massacre) and he has the writing skills needed to engage an audience, but the fact that it took him two thirds of the book to actually get to the trial in question because he was so busy writing about the back story too much is inexcusable. Sure, many of his readers will need a primer on the Holoaust in the Ukraine, but he basically rewrote the whole story rather than having a succinct introduction or referring them to general sources. I also feel like he could have beefed up the discussion of the trial, and done so easily by including interviews and eyewitness accounts (he pawns this off because he figures that it's too raw a wound and people woulndn't be willing to talk...). This is why historians, not journalists, need to take the lead in exposing stories like this! ( )